Highlights from the 35th Annual Central Coast Renaissance Festival

These photos are from the  35th Central Coast Renaissance Festival. Let’s spend some time reviewing this year and giving a shout-out to those that made it happen.

Guests enjoyed the beautiful shade provided by Lucidity.

New Shows

First off, the armored knight shows were fabulous. In my 37 years of working at this festival, I have never seen such big crowds attend a single event. We apologize if you couldn’t get close enough to see it due to the crowds; we’re looking into how to improve on that next year and yes, they will be coming back.

All of the comments I’ve heard rave about it. This wasn’t a staged presentation; this was the real thing. These guys go at each other hard, with swords, axes, pikes, hands, feet, and anything they can get ahold of just like the knights would use in combat in Renaissance England. The blades are dulled so they won’t kill anyone but it’s a real fight. If you want to see more you should check out “Knight Fight” on The History Channel. Many of our fighters are on that show.

The Plague Doctor is always well-received.  We have seen dozens of great photos of the doctor’s shows and meeting (curing?) people in the streets.  The strange look scared a few children. Actually, as odd as the plague doctor looks it is one of the most historically accurate depictions of a mostly unknown profession in medieval and Renaissance life. The stage props were perfect and the doctor is already prepping for next year’s festival.

Our Stages

Our very talented performers filled four stages with wonderful shows. Kenny Elv and his Full Circle Falconry show offered a performance most people will never see otherwise. Audiences were wowed by the antics of Out of Kontrol and Manis O’Tool. Shakespeare was given his due with the performances by Fly By Knight Players.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Joust Kidding, Story Wrens, Madrigali, and many street performers offered top-shelf musical entertainment from one end of the festival to another.

The Buccaneer Stage hosted very well-attended costume contests both days for the kids. They all got a cool gift just for participating. We like getting kids interested in history and being on stage at such a young age because we want them to grow up and be the next generation of folks to participate in and produce the festival so us “old timers” can retire. A lot of us started doing Renaissance fairs as youngsters and we hope these folks do too.

We added a welcoming and beautiful shade structure to the Buccaneer Stage to make it comfortable for the audience, and it worked. Most shows were packed. It didn’t hurt that the weather was perfect.

We placed that stage with the pirate ship behind it in the perfect position. Looking past the stage you’d see Laguna Lake and it seemed like the ship was actually on a body of water. Bob Bartley and his pirate parrot show, Fowl Tales, looked so appropriate on that stage.

Our Guilds

From the Knights of Amog’s towers to Pirate Row, we were lucky to have so many guilds (22 this year!) populate the village with their splendid encampments showcasing the period and teaching and entertaining the crowds.

One of the most important duties of our guilds is to take turns greeting visitors and collecting tickets at the front gate. These people are the first introduction for visitors coming into the festival and they played their part with exuberance and lots of fun. It was rare to not see a visitor enter the site without a smile on their face.

We count ourselves lucky that we have the wonderful St. Stevens Guild to present the royalty of the festival. They generously judge the costume contest each year and they always look fantastic.

For the Birds

We started having a falconry show several years ago. Since then the number of birds on display has ballooned and includes all kinds of falcons, owls, a kookaburra and some I can’t name. We are proud to gives guests a chance to see these beautiful animals up close.

The falconry show presents a rare treat in seeing these birds fly away and return to trainer Kenny Elv.

Our Crew

It takes a week of long, hard days to build the village of Tilbury in Laguna Lake Park.

We absolutely couldnot do it without our hardworking building crew, headed this year by Luis Villanueva. His team builds all of the physical buildings, the stages, the towers, the burlap walls, the straw bale seating for the stages and the dining areas and literally everything that has to be done to get water and electricity to the food court.

It is an amazing job and we are very thankful to the team that made it happen.

We also couldn’t do set up day without the help of volunteers like Jules Smith and Heather Brown who spent all day assisting the Guild, Vendor, and Entertainment Coordinators with check in.

And we can’t thank Sergio Lopez and the other trash collectors enough who had the hard job of keeping the trash cans from overflowing.

Our Vendors

Our food vendors offered a wide assortment of delicious treats for the guests and the craft vendors had outstanding items for purchase.

The look of the vendor booths and the things they offer is a very important part of the look of the festival and this year was outstanding thanks to our Vendor Coordinator, Barbara Shrum

Our Staff

The box office was also run by Barbara Shrum with help from her daughter Camille Katz and several others. It gets hot and humid in there and these ladies kept everything flowing smoothly.

Online tickets were up 20% over last year and that makes more work for our ticket scanning crew, led by David and D’Arcy Trout of the Entguard Guild. Kim Miller has been leading the ticket scanning and check-in for several years and although she stepped down from that job she jumped in again this year when things got busy. Besides handling the huge rush in the first few hours of the festival, David and D’Arcy got married at the festival! Congratulations and best wishes. They have been loyal supporters for several years. In the afternoons, Todd Pesce took over and ran it on his own.

Of course, what is a Renaissance Festival without ale and grog!

Our ale booth staff, headed by Lexie and Jim Williams, were definitely kept busy sating the thirsty crowd and dispensing free insults when requested.

Parking went smoothly; in fact, we filled the guest parking lot by noon on Saturday and had to send people to the participant parking area, so nobody got turned away. Miller Event managed both parking and security and kept everything running smoothly.

Our Administrators and Coordinators

I find it amazing that we put on this festival with only five of us as coordinators! So you can see why we are so grateful for all those who volunteer and participate before and during the festival.

The administrators and coordinators of the festival included Ray Baynham (board chair and site coordinator), Barbara Shrum (board member, vendors, ale booth, box office, site layout), Michael Teubner (board member, guilds, site layout, security), Ron Deluca (president, parking, toilets, trash and more) and Rick Smith (board member, entertainment, advertising, website). Rick’s wife, Kim Miller, worked hard on social media and is largely responsible for the increase in online ticket sales. (If you are on Facebook, make sure to visit our Central Coast Renaissance Festival page and enjoy all the wonderful images that were captured this year!) Board member Steve Allan was sidelined this year by surgery. We missed him and look forward to his participation in 2020.

In reality, we all do many jobs and pick up the reins when needed.

To all of our crew, participants, vendors, and guests, we say a hearty thank you. Let’s do it again next year.

~Rick Smith

NOTE: If you are interested in getting more involved with next year’s festival, we’d love to have you! Comment below and we’ll be in touch.

 

 

 

 

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